Okay
by Angsty Glowstick
Summary: Arthur wakes up to being okay, and he doesn't like it one bit. Eames/Arthur, inexplicitly.


**Disclaimer: **Inception is an amazing movie that I did not make, nor could I have seeing as I'm not a filmmaker, nor do I suspect that I could have the genius behind it.

This is stemming from... let me see: Eames being unforgivably hot and Arthur's all around sexiness, and the chemistry, of course the chemistry. I loved inception and this pairing has taken me by storm. I hope you enjoy it.

X

Arthur's slap in the face came the day he woke up to find himself _okay_.

He didn't know how or why but he was suddenly _okay_ with being himself; _okay_ with being a disappointment to his family, working on the wrong side of the law and putting his life at risk; _okay_ with having acquaintances-friends through work and never personal; _okay_ with not having a stable home, always running and traveling and being more familiar with hotel rooms and warehouses than his far far away flat that he so rarely used he could forget its address; _okay_ with being lonely and not having anyone; _okay_ that the only contact he had was from no-strings one-night stands; _okay_ with the thought that he'd grow up to be old, alone and bitter.

Despite the daily transgressions of his life and dreamscape, Arthur was one bound to reality. He'd always faced it, known who he was and what was to come. He'd never resisted, much. Never tried to change.

But he'd never been _okay_ with it.

It was odd. Going from one world of lament (_it could've been different, if only he'd done so and so or had the courage to do so and so_) to wholly another: he didn't want to be _okay_ with it all.

He was accepting who he was, was mellowing into it. And he didn't like that one bit.

It began to plague his thoughts. He worked as diligently as ever, was wrapped in as well-tailored clothing as ever, kept the no-nonsense mask up as well as ever. But his mind was whirring and it began to seep to his fingers that were trying to type up information from the database, and his laptop screen was too small and limiting, and his back was aching from the six hours spent hunched over it analyzing and reanalyzing information.

Arthur was utterly distracted.

He needed someone to project this on, needed just to be called stupid, inexplicitly, and needed to return to _not being okay_ and to optimal focus.

Arthur was not one for personal conversations, but he feared that change in mindset might be a sign of insanity. He turned on Cobb, asked him whether he'd ever considered what his life might have been like if he'd not entered the field. Cobb was stressed and on maximal adrenaline as the job loomed closer and he answered with a few short choppy sentences. Arthur barely listened because the other man was looking at him like he was trying to gauge out what went altered (or _wrong_) in Arthur's head. Arthur stepped away, curt nod, eyes to the nearby table heaped with files, playing at nonchalance and evasiveness. He had to seem uncaring, you know, _just a random question, nothing more, and back to work, the work, the work is what we're here for and the work is the only thing important and the work is it is it is it the work is all._

The point man left the seemingly unimpressionable encounter even more encumbered. He sat again, hunched over, face to screen and screen to face and fingers went back to mindless, expert typing and databases and information swam before his eyes and lists and data were complied and he—

He was watching discretely, or trying to. Watching for who else he could throw a passing question at, receive a reply.

Ariadne was too young, in too different a spectrum, too female and pretty and with too promising a future to relate. Then there was Yusuf, the man behind wicked concoctions, whiz chemist, family and shop and from across the world. Saito Arthur barely considers: too established and rich and _employer_, too certain and regal. And then there was, there was him.

Eames.

Forger and thief, misguidingly brilliant, cocky, arrogant, smiling always and serious rarely, on jobs some of the time and in hiding most of it. Gambler, con-man, living the life of mischief and deceive, horribly dressed, flipping chips, wide grins and grey eyes and deep, accented voice. He was one to provoke, undeterred, determined in over-bearing, scuttling away to far away lands, never blending in with the natives. _Foreigner._

And utterly, utterly infuriating.

Arthur doesn't go to him, he comes to Arthur. His hand lands on Arthur's nape with devious intention, long and callused fingers crawling lazily upward. Arthur grabs it and hands it back to the owner roughly. He likes his hair kept styled, thank you very much.

"Don't you ever get a hint? I'm working," he snaps. Too viciously. Mind whirring and all peeking out accidentally, you know. A self-made target.

Eames is wearing his lazy grin; there are mischievous lines around his eyes.

"Working. Don't you ever stop being a stick in the mud, Arthur?" he teases. "Y'know. Boring."

Arthur. No, not Arthur. Aaarthurrrr. Heavily accented, failing on the first r and multiplexing the second, stretching the a, twisting the u, spinning the name on its axis. Distortion. Aaarthurrr, not boring old simple common _Arthur_. And it's not just the accent speaking; the man plays with the name, rolls it on his tongue, slowly, rumbles it. Aaarthurrr.

Arthur turns to him, brow furrowed. Frown to smile and smile to frown. Arthur's eyebrows clash more severely.

"Boring," he repeats. He spits the word out, by accident. What was it? A self-made target. A deserving one. "You can find another line of work, I'm certain." _Perhaps a full time gambler_, he wants to add but doesn't.

"Hmm?" Eames hums. His eyes have a look about them. He's looking at Arthur but his mind is elsewhere, weighing options and overturning possibilities, perhaps. Arthur keeps his eyes solid, he's never one in the mood and today is worse. "No, no," the man says after a moment, smile stretching one side of his plump lips. Just one side. "This is it for me. Living the dream."

He chuckles at his own pun, unexpected. Arthur doesn't. His brow is furrowed for a wholly different reason.

"Never second guessed it, then?" He asks, slowly. The question comes out phrased wrong and vibrates for a moment, wrong feeling and wrong intention. How the proper words can sound wrong is something beyond Arthur's sharp intellect.

Eames' eyebrow is raised. The smile too is raised, to freedom. "Me? Never. Took it up and ran with it, darling."

Arthur goes back to his hotel room more disturbed. He wants to fall asleep and dream. The former claims him but the latter is evasive.

X

Arthur wakes up because he's sore. His limbs are cold and stiff and his body registers a bind. He opens his eyes and sees blackness. He _is_ bound, he discovers. Bound and blindfolded. On his back, flat, on warm sheets, familiar-unfamiliar, no pillow elevating his head, face up-back, neck exposed, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows.

His heart rate speeds up, slows down, evens out. He doesn't know if he's in a dream, and he can't reach for his die because his fucking arms are tied to the bedpost, and it's dark in here, under secure cloth, and there are no sounds, and fuck, surely he should be alarmed—

He keeps his head, hears sudden shuffling.

"What do you want," he states calmly. In a helpless situation, panic and hysteria spin you to worse. Negotiation, his training reminds him. The power of words. They put you in authority. No sign of weakness, or fear, none, just lack of affect and…

"Shhh," says a voice. He does not recognize it, but it is surely male. The movement is now above him, and then on him, and he shudders when hands run down his torso, and callused fingers tingle as they push his shirt up to his chest. They are exploring, slowly, brushing nipples with electricity and pooling warmth in Arthur's abdomen.

Sharp intake of breath from the transgressor.

Arthur's heart pounds in his Adam's apple in response.

"W-what are you doing," he tries to say. His own voice is gravelly and thick and hums from the back of his throat.

There is no answer, but the hands have progressed. They splay on his stomach, tease his sides, press southbound, lower abdomen and lit fireworks and then they dare and brush over Arthur's semi-hardness. Arthur gasps, his entire body is slowly combusting in rabid heat and he wants, he wants— the hands push his pajama bottoms down, tantalizingly. Slowly. Mind-numbingly. Arthur trembles, again, feels himself harden further, to painful measure. There is breathing from the perpetrator, and nothing more. The silken material slides down like water, down Arthur's hips, hitches for a second on his erection and is then jerked wantonly down.

He cannot help the grunt he emits when those torturous fingers land on his hardness, shivering their way up and down, just tips, rough and experienced.

"S-stop," Arthur attempts, fails. No authority and no control on the situation. No conviction. Because dear god he does not want them to stop and there is a stab of lust that contracts his muscles as the hand fully grabs him and strokes firmly. He bucks back, words of disapproval swallowed by choppy syllables proclaiming _yes please, ah, fuck, fuck_—

He moans without reservation when wet heat overtakes his erection, smooth tongue lapping at the head, wrapping around, licking patters, sucking, and teeth, gentle pressure, deep deep, depth, heat and depth, and firm suction, fingers teasing his testicles, fondling and ohoh oh god—!

He comes noisily, panting and still pleading, mindless, an automatic mantra, as the white searing heat takes him and plummets him a thousand feet high and rolls in waves around his body to explode at his toes, which curl, and his fingers, which grab thoughtlessly at their cloth prison, and he's whimpering as he comes down from it all, absolutely spent and satiated, and there are pleasant patterns behind his eyes as he's falling blissfully into sleep and, and _no, no wait—_ but he is…

The next time he awakens it is morning and he's on a fifty-fifty. He's in his hotel room, on his back on the hotel bed, but unbound nor blindfolded and no signs on his wrists of being constricted. He remembers it all clearly, much too clearly, not hazy at all, and he breathes deeply and thinks _what the fuck_.

Arthur finds a sticky note, later. It is unsigned and he has no idea how it got there exceptmaybehedoes and who knows.

_It is dismaying how oblivious you are of your own allure, darling._

It crumbles in his hand, and in his mind he sees a wide grin and a teasingly raised eyebrow and a challenge.

There's an unbeknownst smile tugging at own lips but he's so distracted he doesn't notice.

Arthur had awoken to being okay with being okay.

And more.

X

A review would be much appreciated.

Darling. :D


End file.
